Riker's Calling - Episode 23

Riker Wednesdays

~Last week’s last sentence~

It would be a homecoming not only twenty-six years in the making- he had left at the tender age of seventeen- but for him, his whole forty-three years in waiting, for he was about to serve the coldest dish of revenge these parts would ever know.

Episode 23

JASON HESLEHURST. The name I discovered when digging into Royce Riggs’ past. He had filed for the name change on his eighteenth birthday, the petition having been approved by the Los Angeles County court system a month before his first year as a college student. Pulling a few strings, I was able to get some of his school records pulled up, enough to tell me he had grown up in the small mountainous town of Greenville, California. So small that it was only eight square miles.

Convincing Jaime to come on down to Los Angeles had went smoother than I thought it would, mainly due to the fact that she was able to set up a tattoo job with an online friend who was from the area. I figured the last place Heslehurst would want to be was in the city where he had gained his notoriety, so with Jaime as safe as she could possibly be I headed up north, hoping that by going to the origins of his madness I’d be able to better understand the psychopath.

“They’ve always been a disturbed bunch if you ask me,” Sheriff Wilkinson told me as we climbed the half mile slope up to the Heslehurst house. His patrol car couldn’t make it up the sharp incline, so we had no choice but to close the distance by foot. “The only thing they really have goin’ for ‘em is the deed to this mountain, the rent they collect on the base of it enough to sustain ‘em. Haven’t been down off the top in God knows how long.”

“How long have they owned the land?” I asked.

“Oh, I’d say it’s been in the family nearly a hundred years now. Started off as a slaughterhouse of sorts, folks from all around these parts comin’ to ‘em for just about any meat under the sun. That went on till the early ‘70’s, till more civilized laws hit the books and eventually put ‘em out of business.”

“Do you remember Jason? What was he like?”

“You know, they say only so much dumb can come out of a family. That somewhere along the line, the law of numbers has to take effect. If I didn’t believe such a thing before, I certainly did once that boy came along. He was smarter than a whip! While most kids his age was being sent to the principal’s office for not payin’ attention, he’d be in there for fightin’ with his teachers. Tellin’ ‘em how wrong they were on this subject or that.

“Once he hit intermediate and joined the school paper, this whole town was on edge. Tryin’ to print up every little secret there was. And when the faculty put a stop to it, he’d print up his own. And I swear, half the bad that went on around here, I just knew he was behind it, but could never prove it. Next day, sure as the sun rises, there the incidents would be, hot off the press.”

“Did he ever show violent tendencies?”

“Every now and then someone’s pet would come up missin’, found a day or two later butchered to the bone. But again, could never prove who done it.”

“He moved away after high school?”

“Same day as he got his diploma and gave his Valedictorian speech. Had someone drive him to Marysville, where he supposedly got on a Greyhound. Wasn’t till years later when I saw him up on the TV. New name, new look. But those eyes. That’s one thing he couldn’t change. So intent, they could burn a hole right through your soul.”

“Does his family know about his success?”

“I doubt it. They’ve never had a cable line comin’ up here. Far as I know, they’re still only watchin’ VHS movies. Still rentin’ them from a small place in town.”

“Was his family abusive towards him?”

“He’d sometimes go to school with a bruise here or there, and they’d call me in when they were big enough to really cause concern, but the kid would always talk his way out of it. A fall. An accident. Never from a problem at home.”

We finally reached the Heslehurst house. It was aged, the landscape overgrown, the whole place only kept up enough to barely be livable. A dog came scampering out the front cracked door, licking red off his lips and paying us no attention as he found a cool shaded area to lay down and take a nap.

Doubting he had gotten into some marinara sauce, the sheriff and I withdrew our guns. With no answer from our knock, we proceeded on in.